About Last Night

by Ruthie Knox

  When they were really gone, she did a slow scan of her surroundings and sighed. She could not, in fact, find her way around. She got lost in hotels, malls, even parking lots. There was no point in her trying to rediscover the main rooms of the house. Better to wander aimlessly and hope to stumble upon them eventually. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

  Besides, she could use the break from Nev. She’d fallen asleep in his arms and woken up in mourning. Having made the decision to break off their relationship, every second she spent with him felt like an ending, and the morbid voice in her head kept up a steady stream of doomsaying. You’ll never share a bed with him again. Never feel the bristle of his early-morning stubble against your neck. Never watch him button up his shirt. Never.

  Part of her wanted to leave immediately, just to bring the torture to an end. But a larger part wanted to stay so she could keep saying good-bye, if only in her head. Good-bye to everything she loved about him, from the way he kissed to the way he bent over to put on his socks. Every gesture and movement and habit. Every noble, wonderful piece of him.

  Two hours in his company, and she was emotionally tapped out. She needed some time away to recharge.

  The house was a welcome distraction. It went on and on. Handsome enough, if you liked manors, but in her current frame of mind it provoked irreverent questions. Had there been any marble left in Italy by the time they wrapped up construction on this old pile? Had the man who carved all the gorgeous teak woodwork labored in some dimly lit garret before expiring of consumption? What must it cost to heat the place?

  She knew that a lot of prominent English families had been forced to sell their ancestral homes because they couldn’t afford the upkeep. The Chamberlains seemed to be holding their own, but if it had been up to Cath, she’d probably convert Leyton into hard cash and buy a nice flat in the city.

  Not a respectable position for someone who made her living appreciating old, beautiful things, but then she’d never been a big fan of ostentatious displays of wealth.

  She stumbled on the library eventually, where she found the least frightening member of Nev’s immediate family hiding out with a book and a pot of tea. If the parlor was an Austen novel, Richard’s library was Jane Eyre, all dark wood, leather spines, and velvet curtains. And hanging on the far wall, an arresting portrait of a young woman in an elaborate hat.

  “Holy shit,” Cath said without thinking. “Is that a Gainsborough?”

  “It is.” Richard’s tone registered pleasant surprise.

  “Wow. It’s … wow.” She knew she ought to say good morning and all that polite happy-crappy, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off the painting. The eighteenth-century master had captured a relaxed quality in the woman’s posture, a lively kindness in her large brown eyes that suggested she’d be fun to hang out with, despite her fussy dress.

  “You like Gainsborough?”

  “I love him. His people are so alive, I always find myself wanting to strike up conversations with them.”

  Richard nodded. “I’ve read that he painted very quickly. Perhaps it helped him capture the essential character of his subjects.”

  “Is she— Is this a relative?”

  Richard chuckled, sounding so much like Nev that she smiled automatically in response. Apparently, Nev’s dad didn’t have a problem with rude women who burst into his library and quizzed him about his art. “No, when this was painted the Chamberlains were still bootblacks or something equally undistinguished. My grandsire bought the piece later on. And quite a few others as well.”

  “Other Gainsboroughs?”

  “We have a landscape. There’s a Turner, too, if you like that sort of thing.”

  “Is it one of the sunny ones, or broody and apocalyptic?”

  “Sort of in the middle. It’s a seascape. Which do you prefer?”

  “Oh, I like the broody, apocalyptic ones. I also like the ones where it looks like he rubbed Vaseline on his eyeballs before he started painting.”

  Richard laughed again. “Ours might be one of those. Would you like to judge for yourself? I could show it to you, though we’ll have to go clear to the other side of the house. We keep most of the paintings in a special room. Temperature and humidity controls, you know.” He gestured at the Gainsborough. “Even this one most of the time, though I like to have her brought up for a few weeks now and again for a visit. It seems a shame to have art if you’re not to be allowed to look at it.”

  “I’d love that.”

  Richard rose, and they walked across the house together. Cath tested him out along the way, asking questions about the furniture and the carpets, not making much of an effort to conceal her expertise or her impertinence. She kept waiting for his face to tighten up in shock and outrage, but it never happened. Like his son, he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company. She found herself won over by his easy manner and his knowledge of art and history.

  “Have you seen the Gainsborough showbox at the V and A?” she asked a few minutes into the walk. “He painted these landscapes on glass so they could be arranged in a box and lit from the inside.” The showbox thrilled her with its weird uselessness. Outmoded technology combined with timeless artistic skill. She had such a crush on it.

  “I haven’t.”

  “You should come by sometime, I’ll show it to you.”

  “I’d like that. In fact, if they can spare you from your work, I’d love to have a tour. I’ve been through the museum, of course, but I quite enjoy going through collections with people more familiar with them than myself. That way, you get the benefit of all their insights.”

  Cath smiled. “I feel the same way. Though I can’t promise any good insights. The only thing I know much of anything about is knitting.”

  “Is that so? Then you must be involved in the exhibit they’re working up on hand knitting.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “Do you know absolutely everything that’s happening on the London art scene?”

  “Not everything, darling.” He offered her a sly, amused smile that was exactly Nev. “I didn’t know about you.”

  Flattered, she looked down at her shoes and tried not to blush. “I’m hardly ‘happening,’ ” she said. “But yeah, I work on the knitting exhibit. I’m assistant to Judith Rhodes.” She glanced up, bashful. “I’ve been co-authoring the catalog.”

  “Christopher is allowing you to co-author, is he? You are something.”

  “Not really,” she said, embarrassed but thrilled. Richard was an important donor, a connoisseur, and he thought she was something. She let herself enjoy the feeling for a full five seconds before she sabotaged it. “They’re not even going to print the catalog.”

  “Whyever not?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

  She explained about the sponsor pulling out, feeling more like a manipulative asshole with each passing second. They’d been having such a nice time. She didn’t want to hit him up for money.

  Objectively, she knew, there was nothing wrong with asking a major donor for a donation. It was what Judith would do in the same situation, what anybody in the arts would do. Funding was hard to come by. You had to hustle for it.

  But she didn’t want to hustle Richard. She liked him. Already at his house under false pretenses, she hated herself for compounding the sin by breaking out her begging bowl.

  And part of her hated Nev for bringing her here and making her do it.

  “I’m surprised Christopher didn’t phone me,” Richard said when she’d finished. “I’ll ring him up, and we’ll get you sorted.”

  There. That’s what she’d been angling for. Her career, fixed. Her achievements, solidified.

  She didn’t want it. Not this way.

  “Richard, honestly, you don’t have to do that. I didn’t tell you all this expecting you to make a donation.”

  Now you’re a liar, too. Nice, Talarico. Real nice.

  “Of course you didn’t. It’s the least I can do for my new daughter-in-law. Consider it a wedd
ing gift—or as payment for that tour you’re to give me.”

  He smiled then, Nev without the shark. She found a way to smile back, but it kind of broke her heart to do it.

  Nev finally found Cath in the art room, where she and his father had their heads bent over a Michael Ayrton print. They were so engrossed in their conversation, they didn’t even hear him come in. He took the opportunity to watch them, pleased to see the two people he loved most in the world getting along.

  His father towered over Cath, who looked gorgeous in a black skirt and a short-sleeved fluffy pink sweater that made her pale skin glow. She wore tall black boots he hadn’t bought for her. He’d have remembered those boots. The sweater said she was a sweetheart, but the boots promised she kept a whip in the closet. The boots were hot.

  When she’d pulled them on this morning, he’d wondered if they were a statement of some kind. If they were, damned if he could translate it. Something had changed between them last night, but he didn’t know what it was. Cath had been skittish this morning, slipping out of bed to dress before he was fully awake and keeping more distance between them than usual as they toured the house.

  He thought she loved him. Last night, in bed, he’d been certain of it. But this morning, nothing felt right. He kept catching her looking at him as if he’d just broken her heart, and he didn’t know why. He’d tried asking. She brushed him off.

  The tour hadn’t helped. She’d made jokes that were just this side of impolite about the furnishings and fixtures. The sight of the ballroom chandelier seemed to jangle her nerves like fingernails on a blackboard.

  If he wanted to get anywhere with her, he needed her to lower her defenses. That meant getting her out of this house and away from his family.

  Nev cleared his throat, and Cath and his father looked up, startled.

  “Nev! We didn’t hear you arrive,” his father said.

  “I noticed that. I was beginning to think even the Blitz might not distract the two of you.”

  Cath grinned. “You didn’t tell me your father had such a wonderful collection.”

  His father was smiling, too. “You didn’t tell me your wife had such a good eye.”

  Nev crossed the room and put an arm around Cath’s waist, gratified when she softened into his side. “You two are a match made in heaven.” He pushed his luck and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She smelled wonderful, warm and spicy, like an orange studded with cloves. “I don’t want to intrude on your fun, but I was hoping to take Cath out for a while.”

  “By all means,” Richard said, with a wink to Cath. “We’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about art later on.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  He took her to Whipsnade zoo, where she fawned over the marmosets and made him buy her an ice cream even though it was windy and cool—not ice-cream weather at all. At the overlook, she sat between his thighs in the grass and ate her treat as they took in the view of Dunstable Downs, the rolling hills interrupted by patches of farmland and irregular groupings of trees. The whole world spread out before them, green and golden and blue. She called it “twee,” but he could tell she liked it when she turned to give him a sweet, creamy kiss.

  Capturing her head in his hand so he could kiss her properly, he tried to push aside the unwelcome thought that this was the first and last time they would ever spend an afternoon in the countryside together. He kept catching himself thinking he’d inadvertently engineered a catastrophe, and soon—tomorrow, the next day, the day after that—the worst would happen, and he would lose her. And it would be his own fault.

  He told himself he was being absurd. They’d been so close last night. They’d spoken plainly in the dark. She’d told him about her daughter.

  She loved him. She hadn’t said it, but she did. Whatever happened, they would work it out.

  He couldn’t make himself believe it.

  They went for a curry, teasing each other over tamarind sauce and garlic naan. He drove her back to Leyton and made her wear the boots to bed.

  All of it felt like stolen time, an end rather than a beginning. But he didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what to do differently.

  Cath woke up to the sound of rain. She wrapped an arm around Nev’s back and snuggled into him, lazy and content. He stirred, groaned, and rolled over, his arms reaching out automatically to pull her against his side.

  She’d figured out how to stop saying good-bye. All she’d had to do was remember about Limbo: neither Heaven nor Hell, Limbo was the timeless, colorless eternity spent in between. The nuns had always tried to make it sound scary, telling her and the other schoolgirls to pray for the lost babies in Limbo awaiting redemption and their release to Heaven, but Cath had been a skeptical kid, and in her head Limbo had always been the most peaceful place. Better than Heaven, with all those mincing angels and their harps.

  She and Nev were in Limbo, but they were here together. They had a couple more days before Hell.

  “You and me and rain on the roof,” Cath sang quietly.

  “What’s that then?”

  “It’s the Lovin’ Spoonful. Dad had the tape. He used to play it in the car.”

  “Ah.”

  She listened to the rain and relaxed against Nev, enjoying the rhythmic rise and fall of his bare chest beneath her cheek.

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to go downstairs eventually.”

  “Eventually,” he agreed, stroking his hand down her side. When she was curled against him, he could easily reach almost to her knees. It made her feel safe, sheltered.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  He exhaled, eyes on the ceiling. “I’m afraid we can’t escape two days in a row. We’ll have to spend the morning in the parlor with Mother. If we’re lucky, no blood will be spilled.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to let her pull out our fingernails one at a time?”

  “We’ll be all right, love. We just need some armor. I always take my sketchbook and affect to be drawing.”

  “Oh. Well, I have a book. Is reading acceptable?”

  “Only if she approves of the author. Is he English?”

  “No, but almost as good. It’s Ishiguro. Remains of the Day.”

  “You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  He smiled enough to make his dimple show up for a visit, and then he rolled on top of her, wedging a powerful thigh between her legs. “We don’t have to go down there just yet,” he said, his breath warm against her neck.

  Cath wrapped a leg around his hip and pulled him closer. He was hers. Nobody else’s but hers. For as long as they stayed in Limbo, he’d be hers, because here, they were outside of time. They were outside of everything. “You have some ideas about what we might do instead?”

  “Several.” He began kissing his way down her stomach, his palms sliding to her knees and pressing her legs apart until she was completely exposed to him. “I’ll just show you, shall I?”

  It was late morning by the time they made it to the parlor. Winston and Company weren’t around. Cath hadn’t seen them since Friday night, and she wondered who was avoiding whom. Probably Nev was trying to spare her his brother’s contempt. He was sweet like that.

  Richard read a book on the couch. Evita sat opposite him, frowning down at a pile of knitting on her lap.

  How about that? She and Evita shared a hobby.

  Cath took the safe seat beside Richard, while Nev said their good mornings and settled down in the window seat with his sketchbook. The sight of him curled up there in the gray light of the rainy morning made her heart ache. She loved him too much. Much too much. She had to look away and remind herself again about Limbo.

  Her eyes returned to Evita, who had a few balls of yarn going and was peering at an elaborate chart as she knit, glancing at the needles only occasionally. The piece was wide enough to be a woman’s sweater, though Ev
ita had only finished five or six inches of the familiar Fair Isle pattern.

  “That’s a Starmore, isn’t it?”

  Evita looked up quickly, but if Cath had surprised her, she concealed it well. “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?” She was already crossing the room, in full knitter mode and anxious to inspect the work-in-progress. Alice Starmore’s patterns were famous for their intricate, beautiful color work.

  Evita held the needles out to her.

  “Oh, it’s from Tudor Roses,” she said, recognizing a pattern her mother had once knit. “But you’ve changed all the colors.” Gutsy. Starmore’s patterns used a dozen or more different hues, and finding substitutes that harmonized as well as the originals was a dicey job. Evita had done it, though, softening the original palette with cream and pastels to make the design younger, fresher, and more feminine.

  “It’s for Beatrice,” Evita explained. “I thought the original colors were too grown up for her. But honestly, I don’t know why I bother. It’s meant to be for Christmas, but she never wears anything I make her.”

  Cath wanted to be able to offer a polite denial, but there was no point. Beatrice would certainly reject the sweater, which would be beautiful and also completely stodgy and way too English. Very much everything a thirteen-year-old girl rebelling against her family was honor-bound to reject.

  “Yeah. She’ll hate it.”

  There was a spark of something interesting in Evita’s green eyes then. Surprise? Admiration? Whatever it was, for an instant Cruella looked remarkably like Nev. His height, his demeanor, and his smile were all Richard, but that predatory gleam Cath so loved had come from his mother.

  Huh. Come to think of it, Richard was sweet almost to a fault, whereas there was a lot of steel in his son. The realization made Cath curious whether she could forge a connection to the Dragon Lady. “You know, I’ve done some designing for the younger knitting crowd. If you want, I bet I could come up with a pattern that was more Beatrice’s style.”

  Evita frowned. She looked like Nev when she did that, too. Wild. “I appreciate your willingness to help, but I’ve already put a fair amount of time into this. It will have to do for this Christmas.”